Let us talk, you and I, about Blizzard

[Inkidu]

Blizzard just needs to devote some funding to something different, not radical, but pick something and run with it.

WAIT WAIT WAIT... "pick something and run with it"

*massive record scratch*

You mean like... RTSes and RPGs, keep improving 'em, run with something like that? Because they've been pretty much doing that for a decade or so.

A million ideas, but all the M.M.O.R.P.G. I've ever played are basically Diablo with a bunch of people.

1. Diablo; not an MMO

2. So you basically have no clue whatsoever what their biggest property, wow, is actually like.

Something new in that genre, obviously. I felt the something new part was just being redundant if I stated it all the time.

That's why I called it Diablo with a lot of people. If you go on Battle Net it's like M.M.O. lite.

 

[Skipper3]

I hate blizzard for the following reasons:

1. They made MMO's accessible to any Joe schmoe, capable of playing farmville. If you had played everquest back in the day, you'd know what the community was like, Nothing but nice people enjoying the same challenges and experiences together, and it was all so new and exciting too... Now go log into to WoW on ANY server, and read barrens chat or 1-9 or any of the chat for that matter. Immaturity and adolescence at every turn. It's a lot more difficult to find a group of intelligent individuals to play with.

2. By making it so accessible for anyone to play an MMO, WoW, has literally EATEN all of the MMO market, and made it nearly impossible for other games to flourish. It's sick and disgusting, watching developers spend times making great MMO's, then having them shut down because of lack of player base. Everyone is too invested in WoW, to look at anything else. For example, DDO, or Tabula rasa. TR was shutdown, and DDO had to turn to that SHITTY micro-transaction garbage business model, Convenient as it may be for some people, It's awful to see games flaunted as "Free to play" even though, It's only free if you want to experience 1/10th of the game as a whole, without spending money on it.

3. WoW clones, and more WoW clones. Not only has blizzard officially swallowed the market whole. It also spawned a whole bunch of games that are so disgustingly similar, they might as well be the same thing.

I could put a lot more here, But my bulletstorm demo has finished installing and I'm dying to try it

Because all my friends play WoW, don't feel like being a loner in another MMO.

 

[loremazd]

The new mmo is a shooter, apparently.

 

[ShadowyMOON]

Tons of their capital is tied down to support, especially for WoW. And not continuing to support their IPs would be seen as a massive betrayal by most of their fans.

Besides if a new game has the Blizzard seal on it, it's bound to draw comparisons to previous Blizzard titles, and any flaw will be nitpicked over and drop sales. They're better off forming an entirely new studio and brand to go with it for such projects, which I think would be a good compromise anyway.

I agree with you about indie developers, but a lot of them also get away with just releasing something "artsy" and calling it a day. In a way, indie has become mainstream and repetitive in it's own way due to it's own massive success stories and others' emulation attempts of those.

P.S As I said, will be checking this over tomorrow, or you can drop me a PM if you feel like it. It's pretty hard to summarize all of my thoughts on Blizzard as their long time fan in one post at 4 AM.

 

[Inkidu]

No game developer tries to differ from the norm. If they did they'd be in a world other than their own, and you can't make good things when your away from home. BTW you mentioned DaVinci. He may not have finished the Mona Lisa, but the art style that he used for it was something that had been done many times before, innovation wasn't exactly looked on too kindly then

And thank you for comparing Blizzard and games in general to art, i adds a whole lot to our revolution.

That's wrong. Mirror's Edge, Some of Double Fine's work. The Elder Scrolls has been making leaps in that who total immersion thing (though that's admittedly beginning to plateau). Oh, Rock Steady, Bioware has a bit here and there you can see.

 

[daemon37]

If he was a troll he'd be trying to annoy people. We're having a discussion here. Try to have at least a little faith in humanity.

Well at least I am annoyed. A lot of the comments he made in the OP are rather incendiary and seemingly biased. As others have pointed out, other companies do this as well (some to a much greater extent) but for some reason we should all be down on Blizzard for it?

And anyways, what is so bad about establishing a popular franchise? Should JK Rowling have said, "Nah, I'm gonna write books about aliens now." when fans asked for Harry Potter sequels? Should Miyamoto say "Mario is so last decade, I'm gonna make a game about a french carpenter named Piere who fights marsupials now." I certainly hope not.

I love all three of Blizzard's franchises, and simply do not understand how they are harmful or unoriginal. Sorry, I guess I'm an idiot or something.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Blizzard isn't the worst thing by any stretch of the imagination.

Kotick might be. Blizzard have done some sterling work in the past. As have Activision. They just need to get out of their habit of Strip-Raping IPs.

Acti-Bliz, for all their faults, are still supporting gaming for gamers.

A lot of the comments he made in the OP are rather incendiary and seemingly biased.

An opinion that's controversial and biased? Surely not.

I love all three of Blizzard's franchises, and simply do not understand how they are harmful or unoriginal. Sorry, I guess I'm an idiot or something.

See above.

 

[Inkidu]

Tons of their capital is tied down to support, especially for WoW. And not continuing to support their IPs would be seen as a massive betrayal by most of their fans.

Besides if a new game has the Blizzard seal on it, it's bound to draw comparisons to previous Blizzard titles, and any flaw will be nitpicked over and drop sales. They're better off forming an entirely new studio and brand to go with it for such projects, which I think would be a good compromise anyway.

I agree with you about indie developers, but a lot of them also get away with just releasing something "artsy" and calling it a day. In a way, indie has become mainstream and repetitive in it's own way due to it's own massive success stories and others' emulation attempts of those.

P.S As I said, will be checking this over tomorrow, or you can drop me a PM if you feel like it. It's pretty hard to summarize all of my thoughts on Blizzard as their long time fan in one post at 4 AM.

You have raised a point though. I suppose I should partially call attention to the fans. In simple terms: The fans want nothing new so they get exactly what they crave. Also how man new fans does Blizzard bring in? That would be a good research point. W.O.W. is pretty much word of mouth, but I wonder how many of the newer gamer generation bought StarCraft II.

StarCraft II has a whole other dubious topic that even I'm timid around mentioning.

 

[Anaklusmos]

I plead the fifth.

Means to refuse to self-incriminate, not refusal to provide evidence of a sensible argument. You're suggesting forceful implantation of micro-chips in children's brains, right? Cuz I thought of it first.

Fair enough. How about an M.M.O.R.P.G. that isn't stat based, has an element of skill isn't so standardized that it's basically the same thing over and over for the sake of whiners. Something based more off of an organic exploratory vibe than just the next level or the next new loot. Something that doesn't have dozens of virtually identical quests of collect specific number O'animal parts. Something where flying isn't just point A to B but combat and only has flying related quests. A million ideas, but all the M.M.O.R.P.G. I've ever played are basically Diablo with a bunch of people.

In World of Warcraft you're encouraged to explore, you're even rewarded for exploring, with things like easter eggs, and achievments. Not all quests are the same grind, there is one amazing quest chain I'll always remember, it's called the Wrathgate chain. Basically you spend all of the time killing the undead first you do it in a tank, then you kill them with a machine gun, then you chain up a massive dragon and kill it with your fellow Npc Soliders. You then team up with a powerful Paladin to take down a powerful undead mage. Which then ends in...


That was Wrath of the Lich King. Cataclysm did more to shake up the feel of grinding. Aerial Combat was something that was considered in Wrath of the Lich King with a zone called Wintergrasp, but Blizzard thought it would be unbalanced.

Also, when you say 'Grind' all games are grinds. Regardless of how you view it, all games come down to grinding. BioShock, while although an amazing game, with amazing graphics, amazing story, amazing twist, amazing atmosphere is still you killing a bunch of dudes.

World of Warcraft, if you ignore the lore, the community, the huge world, the interesting gameplay, the difficulty, the interesting and fun quests, all it is, is a grind. Just like any other game.

*Yawn* I've gotta get up in 4 hours, so I'm going to go to bed, I'll check into this thread later in the day to see if this thread is still going

 

[Innegativeion]

I feel that most wow hate is either bandwagoning or non-wow players being unreasonable. (most wow hate, mind you)

I'm among those that would agree with Anaklusmos. It's so much better now than it was at launch, it's not even funny.

 

[Inkidu]

If he was a troll he'd be trying to annoy people. We're having a discussion here. Try to have at least a little faith in humanity.

Well at least I am annoyed. A lot of the comments he made in the OP are rather incendiary and seemingly biased. As others have pointed out, other companies do this as well (some to a much greater extent) but for some reason we should all be down on Blizzard for it?

And anyways, what is so bad about establishing a popular franchise? Should JK Rowling have said, "Nah, I'm gonna write books about aliens now." when fans asked for Harry Potter sequels? Should Miyamoto say "Mario is so last decade, I'm gonna make a game about a french carpenter named Piere who fights marsupials now." I certainly hope not.

I love all three of Blizzard's franchises, and simply do not understand how they are harmful or unoriginal. Sorry, I guess I'm an idiot or something.

Well, as far as I know Rowling is working on a series of more older-reader fiction, about what I don't know, but she was supposed to be. Aliens would be cool?

Who says she has to write about wizards just because it made her famous (I'm going to kind of point to fans on this one)? Seriously look at Harry Turtledove. He does alternate history but he also does aliens in WWII and even some fantasy and Conan stuff.

Miyamoto did do something different, by the way. It's become so common-place that it's fallen into the same routine, but it was called Legend of Zelda and it was about a young boy named Link in the land of Hyrule.

 

[Innegativeion]

You do realize that MB has absolutely no clue what he was saying in that video, right?

Like I mean absolutely nothing.

In that video? When does he ever? I remember when he tried to say cosplay and wearing a fotty team's jersey was the same thing.

Opinion conflicts with mine=no idea what talking about.

Wasn't this thread about Blizzard?

 

[Taxman1]

They're a handful of devs not creating new IPs at the rate of a totalitarian factory. Bethesda pops in mind. Technically Valve because they didn't come up with all of their IPs since most of them came from mods but I could be spewing bullshit, prove me wrong.
Anyways you can advance the medium without creating new IPs. Picasso didn't painted with a magic marker, he did it with a common brush. Look at Warcraft 2 to 3, they looked at what was wrong with 2 and replaced it with new mechanics.

It's not a question of whether or not I like Blizzard games, it's not a question of are Blizzard's games good or bad. It's a question of what is Blizzard doing to move the industry forward, and I feel the answer is, nothing.

Ive been saying this for years. Its the saem issue that CoD developers (and CoD clones have)

Did you HEAR DICE?

They want to make their game MORE like CoD

I think we do not give CoD enough credit or at least the now dead Infinity Ward. Lets have a look at CoD4, it broke the mold of WW2 FPS with something that felt fresh, granted they pioneered that WW2 genre. CoD4 did a lot of things right in my opinion, MW2 expanded on the formula because why fix what isn't broken.

I really lean more to the idea they refined it, not expanded. Guns still kill quickly, they just took longer to unlock. Blizzard, as the OP says, does the same thing. They refine, and they refine, and then they refine some more. Points to CoD4. Everything else, in my opinion, is not new.

And that's okay. The industry DOES need, does wnat games that are just refined better. The problem is that they keep using the same formula and it KEEPS being succesful. Even that would be ok if it wasnt making other developers follow suit

MW2 did more than "guns still kill quickly". You get customizable killstreaks and "pro" perks which is expanded on what made the original great, just to name a few. I really wouldn't count WaW and BLops as proper CoD games since they are generally not good.
Blizzard does A LOT more than refine (Updates do not count because that is the whole damn point of updates). Here are screens of Warcraft 3 in a neat animated .gif

Spoiler

And here is the next game in the series, World of Warcraft

Spoiler

And to the argument of "CoD clones" killing the industry, you forget this is a business and devs need to make money so they start off with something safe maybe to get funding(Or not). Maybe once they get the money they can take more risks.
That being said I cant count more than a handful of "CoD clones", I could be crazy though.

 

[Traun]

Reason one: They've not produced anything new since 2001, and I'm being generous. By new I mean a new intellectual property (I.P.). Everything they have produced since Diablo has been a sequel expansion MMO-ification of some old property that has done successfully well. Think about it. Starcraft and its expansions, Diablo and its sequel, Warcraft and subsequent installments. Now, I'm not one to go bashing sequels. I like some of them, I hate some of them. That's not the point. The point is Blizzard is trying desperately to stay where it can make the most money for the minimum amount of creativity. I say if you're one of those people who think that games are joining the echelons of mediums that are considered art you should abandon Blizzard.

Warcraft III is as much as sequal to Warcraft II that Dune II is to Dune I. Warcraft 3 introduced hero-based RTS games to the genre, polished beyond belief. When Blizzard make War 3 they wanted to make a game that is different to Starcraft, they succeeded. Warcraft 3 is a unique strategy on it's own that influenced nearly a decade of RTS design.

Starcraft 2 has a revolutionary mission design, no other RTS games throws away the standard mission design as SC2 does.

World of Warcraft popularized the MMO genre.

What more do you want from them? How big do you think Blizzard is? Blizzard is a relatively small company which has 2-3 teams. A game takes between 2-3 years to make, if you want to polish it more it takes even longer.
As for I.P. - take the issue with Game Freak or Nintendo. A company does what it's best at.

Some people say, "I wish every company was like Blizzard. They refine their games, releasing only when ready so that it is perfect." Well, champ, I'm going to present to you the other edge of that sword. Refining is all well and good, but honestly if every game was like Blizzard I sincerely doubt we'd have 3-D gaming, I doubt we would have 2.5-D gaming either. Sure Blizzard's business model is pure gold. They rake in what has to be millions on a bad year. However, in innovation, in pushing the envelope, and in general Blizzard might as well be trying to fight off guns with swords. Sure it works for a little while in real life (and works really well in Final Fantasy) but eventually the guy who jumps on this newfangled gun is going to walk away a winner. Just ask Japan, Montezuma, and a whole slew of other people.

Blizzard scratched a game in mid-development twice - the original Diablo 3 and Starcraft: Ghost. They could have rushed those products at least expense and grab a quick buck, but they didn't. When Starcraft was first unveiled the public wasn't happy, what did Blizzard do? Scrapped the project and build Starcraft from the ground up( unlike some other companies that I won't mention).

As far as innovation goes:
-Base building RTS (Warcraft I)
-Unique races (Starcraft, before that all factions were similar with 1 unique unit)
-Dungeon Crawlers ( Diablo I)

Blizzard I sincerely doubt we'd have 3-D gaming, I doubt we would have 2.5-D gaming either. Sure Blizzard's business model is pure gold. They rake in what has to be millions on a bad year. However, in innovation, in pushing the envelope, and in general Blizzard might as well be trying to fight off guns with swords. Sure it works for a little while in real life (and works really well in Final Fantasy) but eventually the guy who jumps on this newfangled gun is going to walk away a winner./quote]

That a cool opinion you have there, too bad it's incorrect.

Blizzard on the other hand jams its fingers in its ears and says, "We don't need you we just need the Skinner Box!"If any of you are wondering there is a "Extra Credits" that deals with this issue. Look it up if you're interested.

Blizzard have NEVER used a Skinner Box. You never received any form of award or achievement for grinding or completing task(WoW excluded but about that later) you just went to the next level. If you weren't happy with the story there was nothing stopping you from playing midway, no half-finished achievements, no half-build epic swords. Diablo 2 had some grind in it when it came to multiplayer, but that was needed to balance the SP aspect of the game.

World of Warcraft was the anti-grind of the MMO industry. Do you know what MMO's were before WoW came out? Currently Blizzard are removing as much grind as they can (last I heard a lot of quests were redesigned and even Yahtzee himself complimented them on it), with every expansion grinding has become less and less, not to mention that achievements were introduced post-vanilla WoW(I'm not sure if it was in Lich kind or the previous expand).

Blizzard's unwillingness to change is also shown in their inability to embrace other platforms. I will cite Mr. MovieBob's "The Big Picture" episode "The P.C. Gamer is Dead--Long Live the P.C. Gamer" as supporting opinion.

Blizzard started as a console developer, they released every single one of their games to consoles pre-2000, the reason why they aren't releasing new games to consoles is the same why Final Fantasy haven't seen a PC release since ever (MMO excluded) and Pokemon hasn't had a main installment NOT on handheld. Some things work on some platforms other don't. But don't worry, I heard they are trying to bring Diablo 3 to consoles.

Also - Bob is wrong. Hardware manufacturers have noticed an increase in sales for PC and PC parts and the PC games market has grown a lot, and I'm not talking about Facebook.

I also hear tell of a new M.M.O.R.P.G. that Blizzard is working on. Now, I might be wrong, I often am. No one is perfect, but do you really think their new M.M.O.R.P.G. is going to vary greatly from W.O.W. in anything mechanical. I doubt it. Doing that would be killing the golden goose 101.

The new MMO will differ from WoW mainly because of that. All of Blizzard games have different gameplay Warcraft 3 - Starcraft 2 - Diablo 2(and 3) are played differently.

It's not a question of whether or not I like Blizzard games, it's not a question of are Blizzard's games good or bad. It's a question of what is Blizzard doing to move the industry forward, and I feel the answer is, nothing.

You tried to make some points, but they didn't make any kind of sense what so eve so I skipped them. This has everything to do with how you feel, most of the things you said are wrong - factually - not only as an opinion. Truth be told I don't see a reason to replay, since you sound like an ill-informed hater, but hey, someone can learn something from this.

 

[Innegativeion]

Well, as far as I know Rowling is working on a series of more older-reader fiction, about what I don't know, but she was supposed to be. Aliens would be cool?

Who says she has to write about wizards just because it made her famous (I'm going to kind of point to fans on this one)? Seriously look at Harry Turtledove. He does alternate history but he also does aliens in WWII and even some fantasy and Conan stuff.

Miyamoto did do something different, by the way. It's become so common-place that it's fallen into the same routine, but it was called Legend of Zelda and it was about a young boy named Link in the land of Hyrule.

By that logic, blizzard did something different; called it (insert diablo or warcraft here) and it fell into the same routine.

 

[Inkidu]

I plead the fifth.

Means to refuse to self-incriminate, not refusal to provide evidence of a sensible argument. You're suggesting forceful implantation of micro-chips in children's brains, right? Cuz I thought of it first.

Fair enough. How about an M.M.O.R.P.G. that isn't stat based, has an element of skill isn't so standardized that it's basically the same thing over and over for the sake of whiners. Something based more off of an organic exploratory vibe than just the next level or the next new loot. Something that doesn't have dozens of virtually identical quests of collect specific number O'animal parts. Something where flying isn't just point A to B but combat and only has flying related quests. A million ideas, but all the M.M.O.R.P.G. I've ever played are basically Diablo with a bunch of people.

In World of Warcraft you're encouraged to explore, you're even rewarded for exploring, with things like easter eggs, and achievments. Not all quests are the same grind, there is one amazing quest chain I'll always remember, it's called the Wrathgate chain. Basically you spend all of the time killing the undead first you do it in a tank, then you kill them with a machine gun, then you chain up a massive dragon and kill it with your fellow Npc Soliders. You then team up with a powerful Paladin to take down a powerful undead mage. Which then ends in...


That was Wrath of the Lich King. Cataclysm did more to shake up the feel of grinding. Aerial Combat was something that was considered in Wrath of the Lich King with a zone called Wintergrasp, but Blizzard thought it would be unbalanced.

Also, when you say 'Grind' all games are grinds. Regardless of how you view it, all games come down to grinding. BioShock, while although an amazing game, with amazing graphics, amazing story, amazing twist, amazing atmosphere is still you killing a bunch of dudes.

World of Warcraft, if you ignore the lore, the community, the huge world, the interesting gameplay, the difficulty, the interesting and fun quests, all it is, is a grind. Just like any other game.

See this is why I pleaded the fifth. A. It's very hard to describe what I'm thinking but if I had to boil it down into so many words it would be like Legend of Zelda the M.M.O.

I knew you would come back with something W.O.W.ish. I played W.O.W. I got the free trial. Two weeks. Everything is so boxlike and inorganic, straight out of the can. When I'm given the choice between playing Oblivion by myself or W.O.W. I'll play Oblivion. Yes it can be just as clunky and stat based but W.O.W. was work, it wasn't a game.

Now I know there are limitations to the M.M.O.R.P.G., but if it were honestly more along the lines of Fallout or Deus Ex, or Elder Scrolls that would be better than what it is now.

 

[LiftYourSkinnyFists]

They're a business, they're a successful one, they will develop different games sooner or later but for now Blizzards fan base want Diablo III and more world of warcraft and Starcraft extras sequels and expansions.

I would not trust you to run my company if you were just going to take an idiotic risk, lose 4/5ths of the fan base just for some new cutting edge non MMO or Blizzard-tastic game.